Monday, February 20, 2006

Eastenders update

So my favourite soap opera here is called Eastenders. It's a long-standing tradition in the UK. I've talked about it before...it's a bunch of trashy, sad people from a fictitious neighbourhood in East London. It's totally refreshing compared to US soaps. The characters are poor, they're not that attractive, they talk funny, ridiculously bad things happen to them, and they're just generally miserable people.

My current favourite story line has 60 something, overweight people having a hot, steamy affair. Pat is an Omar's Tent kind of chubby lady who wears the ugliest earrings ever and tons of leopard print. Her hair is peroxide blonde. Her makeup is applied with a trowel, and you can usually identify at least 4 distinct colours on her face. She's practically a clown. She used to be a prostitute and has a history of stealing husbands.

Patrick is a West Indian man who wears wife-beater t-shirts made of white fishnet and who has a fedora on most of the time. He's got a twinkle in his eye all the time and his wife is pretty and nice. He doesn't like to work, but he's started running a car lot because he wants money for going round the pub and betting on the ponies.

They'd been flirting for weeks, what since Pat works at the carlot with Patrick. Patrick decided that Pat had to go to remove temptation from his path. He didn't want to fire her, so he tried to make her quit by telling her he'd been flirting with her just to make her feel better about herself. It worked...she was furious. But when his wife (Yolande) found out that Patrick had let Pat do all the books because he couldn't figure out licenses and taxes, she insisted he hire her back. He had to beg. In the begging, Pat suggested that they had to do something about the sexual tension. The show continued to other scenes, and then came back to a shot of Pat's bedroom. Pat was in her dressing gown smoking a cigarette and looking out the window. Patrick was in the bed grinning with his stupid fishnet t-shirt and his damn HAT on. Pat said, "Ready for round two, Tiger?" and that was the cliffhanger for the week.

Since then, they've done it in the carlot office, Pat's kitchen, and an alley. These people are practically my parents age. Good grief.